Dragon Mirror- Ties Between the Veil
Four: Dream Echoes, Palliza, and the Egg

Raina was lost inside her dream. It clung to her like a heavy fog. She could hear her little sister crying. She heard screaming, and she tried to cry out as she recognized her mother shrieking.

What ya do to my girl!? Tell me what ya did to her ya bastard!

Ma’am, calm down…

RAINA!!!

The voices echoed, whispering, sobbing, shrieking. Laughter undulated in waves as foggy forms small to large morphed, grotesque blobs shifting to silhouettes of beauty.

Chib’Raina.

Her heart clenched as she heard Zhao’s voice, subdued and quiet.

I don’t know what happened. She disappeared on our trip and…

Son, you got tah tell us th’ truth.

I TOLD YOU. I don’t KNOW what HAPPENED!

Pressure built around her heart to an unbearable point, and she felt as if she were being tumbled in a giant wave.

Chib’Raina…

The name floated away on a breeze that gently caressed her face. She heard it whisper again softly, right near her ear. The fog began to billow away in swathes.

Chib’Raina.

She was in a garden, standing on a mown spiral path lined by green yellow striped bushes that smelt of wisteria. The fog gathered behind her, collecting in the need to push her forward to… to what?

CHIB’RAINA!

Raina screamed as the whispered voice was replaced with an ugly wail. She stumbled forward as a grating snarl accompanied a reaching blackness from the fog. The darkness flailed like whips.

MINE! MINE! MINE!!!

She scrambled away on her hands as she fell. A powerful stench of rotten flesh and turned earth assailed her in a miasma as one of the grasping whips wrapped about her ankle. Her skin went numb and dead where it touched, causing the rest of her body to flair in pain, searing all the way to the bone. Raina wailed as if the shadow touched skin had been flayed off.

Her outstretched hands reached out, grasping for anything to pull herself to safety. The foliage seemed to recede out of the reach of her clutching fingertips, and she gasped quietly in despair. Raina whimpered, moaning as she clawed around her as everything went black, when her questing hands contacted something smooth and cool like marble.

The snarling miasma shrieked and dissipated with the fog. As it drained away, it revealed a large egg shaped stone, nearly large enough that she could not make her fingertips meet if she wrapped her arms around it. Her pain flagged, and a sense of serene calm descended on her.

In the lucidity of the dream, she turned and watched as her cat Luna bounded past her. The cat leaped toward the stone, her form merging and passing within.

The stone hummed beneath her fingertips, growing warm beneath her touch. Its color was textured like granite with gold, silver, ebony, and ivory all smoothed and polished into perfection, with small veins of blueish mica. Strangely, the veins outlined runes and tiny pictures.

Raina felt her hand compelled to outline the prevalent symbol on the surface. Her other hand raised to gingerly touch her chest.

She noticed with dreamlike detachment that her pendant was gone- but branded into her skin were the crescent moons and the runic writing. On the stone, the opposite side of her grandmother's pendant was displayed. The rampant dragon clutching…

Chib’Raina…

Raina’s eyes went round, and she leaned her head upon the stone, splaying her hands across it and listening like she had done when she was young and her mother had beckoned her to feel her sister growing in the womb. A song built within the stone, no, the egg, and swelled her heart with joy.

My Chib’Raina.

My Drakunmate.

Raina abruptly woke, her eyes staring up into the green gauzy canopy of a bed, and the pointed face of a lizard.

“SHIT BALLS!”

The creature squealed, flipping back on bright gossamer wings. It landed on the footboard of the bed, arching six glittering dragonfly wings. The lizard bared its teeth, hissing and growling in an agitated way.

An old woman entered through an arched doorway.

“Kiall ash normin, Torou-Ki.” The lizard lowered its head, trilling in response to the woman’s words. The woman laughed, holding out a hand to the creature, who promptly launched to her forearm.

“Do not let him bother you. Torou-Ki is very curious.” Raina felt her eyes locked by the woman’s. Rigid and a bright blue-green, Raina felt paralyzed by them, and she felt recognition slipping from the edges of her consciousness, as if she should know who this woman was. The woman winked at her, and she was reminded strongly of her grandmother. Her jaw dropped as she realized that this woman looked eerily like her grandmother had in her early fifties.

“Pani?” She blurted.

“Ahhh…” The woman held a finger to her lips. “My name is Palliza. But I believe I am related to Panillia.” She flicked her hand away and twiddled her fingers. “Perhaps there are more important matters to attend?”

Raina followed Palliza’s gaze out of the window.

Outside of her window lay a wild looking garden, lain in a spiral pattern. At the center of the spiral rested the egg she had just seen in her dream.

“Wait, what the hell is going on?” Raina broke her gaze from the garden and rubbed her face vigorously with her hands. She had goosebumps, and she felt like she was floating. Was she still asleep? Should she just go with this?

The old woman pursed her lips as she watched Raina struggle with reality, or the lack thereof. “Go outside for some fresh air, fledgling. If it is a dream- it cannot hurt to enjoy the garden. I will bring you something to eat outside.”

Raina could feel the warmth of the sun on her neck and face. It still looked like the same sun. But what was freaking her out at this moment was that there were two moons, and one of those moons had a tiny moon of its own, all perched up in the sky near the horizon.

Her focus to inspect the egg in the middle of the spiral garden had been completely thrown to the dogs the moment she looked up and spotted this bizarre anomaly. She felt awake. She could feel her feet were drowning in sweat in her boots. Her bra was pinching her. She still felt like she was floating in a dream.

She was awake.

Palliza set a tray down next to her on the stone bench she had settled on. Raina hesitantly rested her fingers on something that looked like a piece of fruit stuffed bread or pastry pocket.

She glanced back up at the moons, then quickly back down to the food. Palliza sat next to her.

“You should eat, and then we can speak about other things.”

Other things.

Like where she was, and where home had gone. Her skin crawled, and she restlessly broke apart the pastry. She needed to get home. Zhao was back home and probably had no idea what had happened. She needed to call her mom. Her cell phone had been in her pack. No way there was service in an alien world, but the desire for the comforting object of her phone was overwhelming.

She stared down at the food on her plate, visualizing her phone. In her mind's eye she saw it lying where it usually would when she ate, sitting next to the right side of her plate, waiting for her to pick it up.

Raina felt a sickening lurch inside her skull, her vision grew gray, and she felt a growing heat. There was a quiet gasp and suddenly her face burned from a resounding SLAP to her cheek.

She rocked back, hand coming up to cup her face. She stared at Palliza, who had struck her.

“What the fuck?”

“I apologize, but you were doing something dangerous that you must never do again.” Palliza motioned down to the tray, and Raina gaped.

Her breakfast was no more.

In its place on the right side of a burnt tray was a molten mass shaped like a flat rectangular plate- exactly the shape of her cell phone. It gave off heat like the coals in a fire pit, and a six inch radius around it looked like the runoff of a floodplain. All of the matter bunched in runnels to the phone shaped lump.

Titty Fucking Christ. I’m in a SciFi movie.

An explosive snort made her jump up from her seat and to the side. The dragon with the feathered mane and crest was laying across the garden from her, watching.

That is an interesting… saying. The words sounded directly in Raina’s brain and she felt the hair on the back of her arms rise. Her questions and astonishment from seconds ago flew from her mind, her emotions overloaded.

“You can hear my thoughts?”

Aye, you’re a very loud True-Speaker. It is hard not to hear you. The dragon’s crest rose and fell as she lowered her head to her forelegs. Go touch the egg. Things will make sense.

“Uh…” Raina struggled for a moment, entirely creeped out. Her sensation of dream-like floating was quickly being replaced with a mild anxiety and panic.

“Maybe I should just pass on that…” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what would happen if she touched a fucking alien egg in an alien world- but enough alien movies begged she elicit a little goddamn caution. Especially after her breakfast had become a molten mass after thinking at it.

Touch the “fucking” egg. The dragon’s tone was deadpan yet amused.

Raina stared. The dragon (wasn’t her name Tralna?) stared back. A random illogical thought popped into her brain.

“Did you eat my cat?”

Tralna snorted again, conveying a sense of disbelief and absurdity.

The familiar I see in your mind… I have not seen it, although I suspect the answers will come to you… after you touch the egg.

Raina scowled. She felt like she was losing her grip on her sanity. Before she could let herself think about the absurdity of it all, she turned and stalked towards the egg. She tried to convince herself at least that if an alien monster popped out that she would be done with the craziness. She reached out and slapped the edge of the egg with her palm, right on the pendent marking. There was a brief moment of nothing, and she started to turn her scowl back at Tralna.

Then everything exploded in color and light.

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